Are Welsh Trails Up For Sale By NRW?

Local mountain bikers and councillors around Coed y Brenin are concerned that Natural Resource Wales (NRW) is planning on selling off the Coed y Brenin visitor centre and its miles of trails to the highest bidder in a veiled closed-door process that has ignored local community groups. Top of the favourites appears to be Forest Holidays, the company behind similar uproar at Glentress. We’ve taken a closer look at what seems to be happening behind the scenes at NRW.

Update 4th June:

We’ve heard back from NRW. Unfortunately, they have told us that the Recreation Strategy is now final, and things are moving forward to the implementation phase: ‘The adoption of the recreation strategy is the first step, and NRW colleagues will now be considering the strategy at a more local level and how we deliver the ambitions over future years to 2050.’

Dominic Driver, NRW’s Head of Land Stewardship said: 

“Our strategy for how we in NRW manage access to nature on the land in our care means we will focus our efforts where we are best placed to make a difference by providing safe and inclusive
access that inspires people to value nature.  We want others to work with us where they can do a still better job and further reduce the burden on public funds overall.” 

It appears the Recreation Strategy is a done deal, so out next best hope is to keep an eye on – and influence – how it gets implemented. We have asked how the public can engage with the implementation phase – we’ll keep you posted if we hear back.

Here at Singletrack, we are surprised and disappointed that a strategy with such potentially far reaching impacts on the public can be created with so little external consultation. It appears that NRW has relied heavily on consultation with Local Access Forums for its ‘external’ input – an illustration of the importance of these local forums, on which we know mountain bikers are often not represented. We’re continuing to make enquiries to see how extensive the consultation process was, in the hope that we may be able to identify routes for future engagement. We’ll let you know if we make any headway.

Original Story Below

Natural Resources Wales on Thursday 23rd May considered a new draft Recreation Strategy, which makes clear that it is seeking to offload much of the responsibility for creating recreation opportunities. Whether this is paving the way for privatisation, or empowering communities remains to be seen – but the early signs have some communities worried.

The paper accompanying the draft strategy explained to the NRW Board:

The Strategy will see a shift from putting our own resources into creating opportunities for recreation, to being about managing (and in some cases restricting) recreational activity, and supporting others to deliver on the land, to connect people with nature, and support the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) aims and our wellbeing objectives. This will also mean that there will be less of our direct resources going into recreation on the land in our care.

NRW Board Paper 24-05-B09

In straightened times when budgets are tight, everyone reliant on government funding is looking for ‘efficiencies’. In some instances, an increased emphasis on allowing others to deliver recreation could be a good thing – particularly if it leads to trail associations more easily being given permissions to manage land and trails. But on the flip side, we might well be concerned if private companies moved in and made everything pay to play. The Strategy makes it pretty clear that commercial considerations are a focus:

Together with the corporate plan a new commercial strategy has been published, and recently reviewed, which sets a vision to generate income through sustainable commercial activity, so that we can do more for Wales’s environmental, social, economic, and cultural well-being. More explicitly it strengthens our ability to proactively pursue more recreation activities being delivered by others on the land in our care.

NRW draft Recreation Strategy (page 3)

A crucial factor in the success of partnership working (whether commercial or otherwise) is communication… and if the experience of the community at Coed Y Brenin is anything to go by, we might well have grounds to be worried. Indeed, the report accompanying the draft strategy notes that the early consultation phase raised the issue of poor partnership working:

Partnership working: Emphasis on creating a coordinated and community-focused approach to share resources, access additional funding, engage with local communities, share information, and best practice. Current feeling that NRW is a difficult organisation to engage with and needed to be more outward looking and collaborative.

NRW Board Report

The first we heard of the NRW Recreation Strategy was back in September last year, when we brought to your attention a survey that was fairly universally received as being badly designed. Then, in January we heard that visitor centres were under review. This was the first time anyone had heard that closures were a possibility, and there was no public call for evidence or notification of consultation – NRW appeared to be doing the entire consultation and analysis internally. After a bit of asking some pointed questions, they revised the statement they’d initially given the press to include a commitment to attend a public meeting about the future of Coed Y Brenin.

Since then, interested residents have formed a community group called Caru Coed y Brenin. It’s a properly constituted Community Interest Company whose long-term aims are to gain stewardship of the centre, to secure the future success and longevity of Coed y Brenin, and to ultimately run the centre under the auspices of a community enterprise. 
 
Rhys Llywelyn, who is a local business owner and a member of the Caru Coed y Brenin group, states:
 
“Coed y Brenin is special, its significance in the development of mountain biking is legendary. The local community has embraced the centre, trails and the visitors and to see the decline in the effective management of the facilities here is heart breaking. We are passionate about protecting and developing the facilities here for all the users and keeping the benefit local. ”

With people as organised, willing and engaged as that, you might think NRW would be keen to hear from them? Especially if your entire future strategy (and financial sustainability) depended on partnership working? And you’d already identified that people think you’re failing to be collaborative?

The Caru Coed y Brenin group says they have been failing to get further engagement from NRW, so took the step of attending the NRW Board meeting online on Thursday 23rd May, where the Board would consider the draft Recreation Strategy. On the NRW website, members of the public are encouraged to attend their meetings online and to submit questions in advance of the meeting. The keen crew from Caru Coed y Brenin did just that, sat through the lengthy meeting, and then were told that no questions were being taken.

When it came to the ‘questions from the public’ section at the end of the meeting the Chair of the meeting announced that all interested/relevant parties were already in communication with the NRW and being kept up to date with everything. Therefore there was no need to take any questions from the public.

Caru Coed y Brenin group member

NRW states that the Strategy is primarily aimed at its staff:

Although this strategy has been developed and published by us, with the primary aim to help our staff manage and make decisions about outdoor recreation, it is relevant to all those involved in managing and delivering outdoor recreation activity that impacts upon the land in our care.

NRW draft Recreation Strategy (page 5)

Given that this strategy will affect how the public can access land in Wales for recreation, you might hope that it would be a little more public facing in its approach. It appears that beside the initial survey (of questionable design) and (somewhat forced) attendance at the Coed Y Brenin public meeting, there has been no public engagement with a strategy that is all about how the public will be able to access recreation in future.

Furthermore, the very people living and working in a community who would appear to be the ideal ‘partners’ for a future relationship in delivering recreation opportunities say they feel ‘stonewalled’. This is an experience that seems to be echoed by the Trail Collective North Wales, who have been waiting for a response to their carefully collated and submitted proposals for community trail management since September 2023. NRW has cited resource constraints in its ability to consider the proposals – another potential sign that ‘partnership’ working in future is going to need to come with a big cash injection to NRW before any community groups are going to get a look in.

Which doesn’t all bode terribly well for the future of recreation in Wales, now, does it? Perhaps more concerning still, the community at Coed Y Brenin reports that at the meeting, the NRW attendee suggested that ‘someone like Forest Holidays‘ might be good to deliver future services. This is the company that’s already got an accommodation presence in many of our forest locations, and has taken over a large part of Glentress in Scotland – resulting in a bunch of trail closures. Not necessarily a popular choice in the mountain biking community then, and very much a holiday accommodation provider and not a trail steward.

With NRW being the largest land manager in Wales, we’re all dependent on them for access. On the back of that, communities and businesses across Wales are dependent on NRW delivering access in order to keep delivering tourism and all the associated employment and jobs.

Surely, a strategy as important as that shouldn’t be determined in a black box of meeting rooms, without clear and constructive opportunities for the public and communities to get involved?

The draft strategy is set to become the final strategy in June – however, the announcement of the General Election may just buy us all a little time – and NRW time for a rethink. We asked them a week ago how interested parties can provide input into the draft strategy before it becomes finalised – as well as why no questions were taken at the Board meeting on 23rd May. We’ll keep you posted if we hear back.

In the absence of any other provided contact methods or formal consultation process, if you don’t like what you’re reading we suggest you email the secretariat of the NRW Board: nrwboardsecretariat@naturalresourceswales.gov.uk A nice full inbox of public objections might just ruffle a few feathers.

We’d suggest you say:

• You want to see strategy revised to give community groups a strong preference over commercial providers
• You don’t want to see any trail, land or facility closures/sell offs without public consultation
• You object to the lack of public consultation over the strategy
• You support Caru Coed y Brenin being given the chance to run facilities at Coed y Brenin

Those wishing to express support for Caru Coed y Brenin and its aims can also contact CaruCYB@gmail.com

Be prepared to raise your voice to protect your recreation opportunities – or put your hand in your pocket to pay the highest bidder in future?

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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